Mouse Trap
by 1Styx and Stones1
Summary: The team heads off to Disney World to hunt down a serial killer preying on honeymooning Marines. Meanwhile, Tony and Ziva 'talk' about things...at great volume...while Tim holds his ears. Case-fic, with a healthy dose of Tiva to keep things interesting.
1. One of Those Days

**I wrote out the first part of this and published it, only to find that I really didn't like it. You see before you a revised edition with the same general idea, only a heck of a lot more Tiva. Let me know what you think. **

**Disclaimer: When yoooouuuu wiiiish upoooon a staaar, you stiiiil doooon't geeet NCIS...**

Alison Kinney turned to look at her friend, Cara Jennings, with a stare of disbelief. "You're telling me," she said slowly, "that you have been to Disney World twice and never gone on _It's a Small World_? _Ever_?"

Cara just shrugged. "Isn't it supposed to be horrible anyway?"

"The horribleness of it is what makes it a classic!" the third girl, Jenna Gallagher, exploded. "The creepy dolls, the highly irritating music. It's like a right of passage. If you can handle _It's a Small World_, you can handle anything." She stopped to consider this, cocking her head and making her brown ponytail swing. "Except maybe for the _Snow White's Scary Adventures_ ride. No one can ever be prepared for that."

Cara snorted. "Snow White? What are you guys, four?"

"For your information," Jenna returned with dignity, "that ride is the single scariest experience I have had in fourteen years on this planet. And you've met my brothers, so that's saying something."

Someone cleared their throat loudly behind them. A cranky looking mother holding a wailing toddler was tapping her foot impatiently. "Are you girls on line or what?"

"Oh. Oops," Alison giggled and hurried to catch up with the rest of the line. "Sorry."

"Geez. Friendly much?" Cara muttered, glancing backwards at the frazzled mother. "I thought this ride was about happiness and stuff. Isn't there a law against bad moods?"

"No, no, you've got it all wrong," Jenna assured her friend. "This ride evokes bad moods. It's a crankiness-causer. But you have to go on it, or you're not living the Disney experience. It's the grey cloud in an otherwise silver lining."

"Did you botch that saying on purpose?" Alison asked conversationally. "Or was that just you being you?"

Jenna considered this. "Both."

"Next can we go on a real ride?" Cara asked, surveying the sparkly gold sun above the waterway with mingled disgust and amusement.

"This is a real ride!" Alison and Jenna shouted in unison, causing several people in line to turn and look curiously.

"I don't think you understand, Cara," Alison said seriously. "This is not a kiddy ride. This is the adult version of the _Haunted Mansion_, only with bright lights and irritating music."

"I think you guys are taking this a little too seriously," Cara laughed.

Jenna turned to Alison and shook her head. "It's hopeless. She just doesn't understand."

"Excuse me, girls," the cranky mother said from behind them. "While I'm sure your discussion is most diverting, some of us would like to actually get on the ride at some point. So either pay attention to the line movements, or stand aside."

Giggling embarrassedly, the girls rushed to catch up with the rest of the line. "Sheesh. I don't know why anyone would be in a rush to get on this ride," Alison whispered, peeking at the snappish mother through her giggles.

"She's cranky enough without singing dolls and annoyingly catchy music," Jenna intoned wisely. "They should have a caution sign, like they do for the big roller coasters. _Warning: This ride involves automated dolls who may or may not be secretly watching you, plotting your demise as they sing their cheerful little death tune. Not for people with a tendency to be cranky."_

Cara and Alison just looked at their friend. "You have a sick mind," Cara said finally, turning to hurry after the people ahead of them in line before the impatient lady could do anything more than clear her throat pointedly.

"It's the ride," Jenna said seriously. "Last time we were here, my brothers made me go on this ride _four times_. The third time, the ride broke down halfway through and I was stuck in the tunnel for almost fifteen minutes with those singing dolls. I almost drowned myself."

"You must have been traumatized," Cara said dryly.

"You have no idea," Jenna responded.

"Girls!"

Before the mother could get in another word, the girls ran full-tilt after the line. "How many?" a sickeningly cheerful ride attendant asked, stopping them at the turnstile.

"Three," Cara answered, as the other two girls were too busy giggling to respond.

The attendant gestured them forward. "Take row four."

As the cranky mom and her hysterical toddler stepped up to the turnstile, the girls climbed into the boat. "Can I sit in the middle?" Alison asked. "I'm always scared that one of those dolls is going to reach out and grab me. I used to have nightmares about it."

"Used to?" Jenna snorted. "Honey, I still do!"

"Excuse me, girls, you're going to have to sit down!" one of the ride attendants called.

"Fine. Switch with me, Ali," Cara decided, scooting around so that Alison was in the middle and she and Jenna were on either side.

"Thank you!" the worker called, polite to a fault. As the girls settled into their seats, the ride started slowly, the boats bumping into the sides as they slowly made their way under the windmill where the ride operator sat. The operator, a middle aged woman, waved cheerfully to the boats as they passed below.

"I bet that windmill's soundproof," Ali said, waving back with false enthusiasm. "There's no way someone could be that cheerful if they had to sit up there all day and listen to this music."

"I don't know," Jenna said thoughtfully. "I bet there's something really satisfying about shipping unsuspecting passengers off to their doom."

"Help me," Cara whispered, putting her head in her hands. "Somebody kill me now."

"The ride hasn't even started yet!" Ali argued. "If you think this is bad, just wait until-"

"I wasn't talking about the ride," Cara said exasperatedly.

"Oh."

The argument would have continued, no doubt, with much eye-rolling and tongue-sticking-outing, had not the boat entered the tunnel and into the bright, glittery world of dancing dolls and cheesy music.

Five minutes into the ride, and Cara was seriously starting to question her friends' sanity. Ali screamed anytime the boat got within five feet of a dancing doll, and Jenna seemed to know all the words to the song, which she was singing quietly in Cara's ear.

"Wasn't that the scariest thing you have ever seen in your whole entire life?" Ali questioned, holding Cara's arm in a death grip as they climbed out of the boat as the ride, mercifully, ended.

Cara shrugged. "I don't know. The dolls are a little creepy, I guess. It was the guy in the water who got me, though. I was surprised they'd put that in a kid's ride."

"Don't you see?" Jenna began. "It's not a kid's ride! It's a - wait. What guy in the water?"

"You know," Cara said. "The guy in the water under that fake bridge where the emergency exit is. That was pretty scary, but the rest was-"

"There's no guy in the water in that ride," Ali said, turning to Jenna with a confused look on her face.

"Definitely not," Jenna agreed. "I've been on that ride way too many times. I know the whole song, for God's sake!"

"Believe me," Cara said wryly, "I know."

Ali and Jenna swiveled to face their friend. "Which doll was it? Maybe one of them fell off?"

"It was bigger than the other kind," Cara said, baffled. "And way more lifelike. It was like regular size."

"What was it wearing?" Ali pressed. "I don't remember any life-sized dolls on the ride."

"I don't know." Cara frowned, trying to recall the image of the guy. She'd been a little preoccupied with trying not to kill Jenna, to tell you the truth. "Like a uniform, maybe? I don't know. Why is this important?"

"And it was life-sized?" Jenna repeated.

"Yes!" Cara exclaimed, exasperated. "Can we go, please? I want to go on some real rides now!"

Scarily, neither of the girls made the slightest move to correct her on her assessment of 'real' rides. "Oh my gosh," Ali whispered, turning to Jenna. "Do you think-"

"We should report it to somebody," Jenna decided. "It's probably just a doll, and they'll send someone in to fix it. Come on."

With that, Jenna and Ali started off, leaving a confused Cara to trail after them.

Tim McGee exited the elevator and entered a war zone, armed only with a cup of coffee that was looking smaller and smaller by the second. He was going to need a whole lot more caffeine than this if it was going to be one of _those _days.

_Those _days were increasing in frequency and intensity, to the point where Tim was considering changing the name _those _days to _every_day. His caffeine intake reflected this trend as well. If this continued he might very well take to Caf-Pow, if only to get him through the day without a complete nervous breakdown.

Okay. So maybe the Caf-Pow was a bit rash. Maybe he was just over-exaggerating. After all, it wasn't like they were screaming at eachother.

_Yet_, chimed in the pessimistic part of him. _They aren't screaming at each other yet._

While it was true that they had not yet begun to disrupt the office peace, the tension that accompanied one of _those _days was there all the same, in the set of his jaw and the lift of her head. Tim wondered if it wasn't too late for him to make a break for it and call in sick.

"McGoo!"

Tim winced. He'd been caught. He had no choice now but to enter the warzone with his hands held high to show his impartiality. Sometimes it really stunk being Switzerland.

"Morning, Tony, Ziva."

"Good morning, McGee. How are you?" Ziva asked, with an admirable attempt at civility. The old McGee, the chubby hacker with a school-boy crush on Abby, might have even mistaken it for genuine concern. He knew better now, of course. There was only one motive behind the Israeli woman's greeting, and it was not to secure his well-being. Rather, it was a show of decided indifference for the other man in the bullpen, a display that whatever had already passed between the two had not affected her in the slightest.

Whatever her true objective, McGee was all too eager to play along with Ziva. He'd rather be used to spite Tony than be ignored altogether as the two battled it out in one of those fights that sent the office pools into an uproar.

Last McGee had checked, about fifty percent thought the two would kill each other by the end of the week. The other half had more…erotic themes in mind. Then, of course, there was the silent minority who just wanted things to go back to normal. McGee's sympathies lay with the latter, though he couldn't help but wonder when things around the office had ever been particularly _normal_.

Normal was certainly not the first term he would have chosen to describe his work place, nor would it ever be the word he would use to describe Tony and Ziva's relationship, but the last week or so had taken things to an entirely new level. In fact, the past few days had put the term 'normal' on the autopsy table to die.

It had started exactly a week ago, in an arrest-gone-wrong. He had ended up crouched behind a crate in the shipping yard, praying the suspect's gun would run out before his own. They'd been stuck, and Ziva had done something about it.

Admittedly, it had not been a wise move. If it had been anyone but Ziva, with anyone but Ziva's luck, it probably would have ended badly. But this _was_ Ziva, and that idea had never even crossed her mind. She'd merely stood up, making herself an open target, and put a round in the suspect before he could even fire once.

Needless to say, Tony had not been happy with his partner's rash actions. Gibbs hadn't been pleased either. There'd been a long elevator conference in which Tim was sure Ziva got the scolding of her life. But Ziva and Gibbs fighting was nothing like Ziva and Tony fighting. Ziva and Gibbs spent three minutes in the elevator and emerged allies once more, Gibbs pressing a kiss to Ziva's cheek as the doors closed.

Ziva and Tony did not resolve things that easily. In fact, Ziva and Tony tended not to resolve things at all, but to ignore the issues until they could ignore them no more, then hash it out in screaming fights that dug up every tiny grudge from the moment they'd met and, in the end, solved nothing.

And that's what Tim had been suffering through all week now. It had started as a tautly furious Tony and a completely bewildered Ziva, who had then turned into an indignantly righteous Ziva upon hearing why her partner was so distressed. Things had snowballed since then. Yesterday's fight had started over an off-hand remark of Tony's and ended in accusations of 'being over-protective' and 'trying to get yourself killed.'

Of course, Tim knew that the words themselves meant nothing. What his friends were really fighting over had started long before the shoot-out, and was far more painful, because when you ignored an open wound, it festered.

Tim had a feeling that whatever Tony and Ziva were fighting over right now had been festering for a whole lot longer than a week, and would take a whole lot more than an elevator scolding to clear up.

"Something I can help you with, McGee?" Tony asked exasperatedly. Tim blinked, realizing he'd been staring at his male colleague as he'd pondered the touchy situation Tony had gotten himself into.

He opened his mouth to apologize, only to be cut off by Ziva. "Do not listen to him, McGee. He is just being fishy."

Ziva sat back in her chair and crossed her arms, dark eyes glaring at Tony. After a moment of silence, Tim turned to look at DiNozzo as well, waiting for him to correct the flubbed idiom.

Tony sat with his own arms crossed, eyes boring back with a dark fury that suggested the only things that he was likely to say to right now would be a bit stronger than 'I believe the term is _crabby_, Zee-vah.'

And so, once again, Tim was caught in the middle of the battlefields. Even his coffee was looking like a pretty poor ally right now.

How important was it that Ziva know the difference between 'fishy' and crabby?' Important enough to interrupt this heated staring contest and no doubt incur the wrath of the disastrous duo, a force to reckon with whether divided or united?

Tim sat, wretchedly debating a predicament so ridiculous it was laughable. But nothing was simple on one of _those _days, and even the smallest of matters, the stupidest of idioms, could be the trigger for another round of fighting.

At a time like these, there was only one thing left to do.

"Um, I have to go see Abby about…stuff," Tim said lamely, grabbing his coffee and preparing to flee the scene. It was an awful excuse, worse even than the infamous 'Nutter Butter' incident, but neither questioned it. In fact, he doubted either even heard him.

Even so, he took the long way around rather than step into the middle of the heated staring contest. As soon as he was out of immediate danger he made a break for the lab. There was really nothing else you could do on one of _those _days.

"Timmy!"

Tim stepped into the lab and was immediately enveloped in a hug forceful enough to sufficiently wind him. "Hey…Abs," he wheezed after a moment.

Abby stepped back after a moment to study him suspiciously. "Where's my Caf-Pow?"

"Um, actually, I'm not here about a-"

"You don't have my Caf-Pow, do you?" she interrupted. Tim sighed and dug in his pocket for any spare change.

"I'm sorry, Abby. I'll be right back with the-"

Abby laughed. "I'm kidding, Tim! I mean, if you need the exercise, I would never say no to a Caf-Pow, but _you_, Timothy McGee, are always welcome. Geez, I thought you'd learned how to take a joke after eight years with Tony."

"Don't talk to me about Tony," Tim groaned, throwing himself into the nearest chair tiredly.

Abby's green eyes widened understandingly. "Ohhh. They're at it again?"

"Again? When do they ever stop?"

The Goth scurried off to snag a chair on wheels, sitting in it and setting herself rolling by pushing off with her boot. Her shove was a bit too forceful, and she ended up crashing her own chair into Tim's.

"Ow. Sorry." She recovered quickly, propping her chin up in her hands and looking at him expectantly. "What was it about this time?"

"I don't even know," he sighed. "But they're up there glaring at each other for all they're worth. I got out before it could escalate any further."

"But they weren't screaming?"

Tim shook his head tiredly. Abby, ever the optimist, tried to look for a bright side.

"That doesn't sound _too _bad," she allowed cautiously, patting Tim's hand. Lest he take her optimism for a lack of sympathy, she quickly added, "I mean, I'm sure it was awful for you, but it's been worse, hasn't it? Like, at least they're not yelling yet or like, throwing things at each other or something."

Tim shook his head again. "That's not the worst of it. She messed up an idiom, something stupid about fish or crabs or whatever, and he didn't say anything. He just glared at her."

Abby gasped, hands flying to cover her mouth, the picture of a damsel in distress…a damsel wearing spiked platform boots, but distressed nonetheless. "Tony? Not taking the opportunity to correct her? This is serious."

"They're killing me, Abby." Tim knew it sounded whiney, but if a man couldn't whine after a week of _those _days…

Abby was properly sympathetic. "You poor thing, Timmy. You must be dying." After a moment she brightened and jumped to her feet. "Come on, Tim."

She hugged him fiercely, then grabbed his hand and started for the door. "We're going to talk to Gibbs. He'll put a stop to this craziness."

Tim couldn't help but smile at the childish conviction that there was nothing a little affection and a silver-haired ex-Marine couldn't fix. "Abby, I don't know if that's a good idea."

"Of course it is! He's Gibbs, McGee! We're, like, his personal collection of Klondike bars! He'd do anything for us! "

"Never really liked those things," Gibbs said conversationally, striding into the room. Abby hurried over to give him a hug.

"Gibbs! Hi!" She pulled away and frowned at the older man. "You're, like, hours too early! I don't have anything for you!"

"You have McGee," Gibbs answered, then turned to Tim. "Gear up, then get home to pack your things. We're going to Disney World."

**Yay! I like this version waaaay better. Your thoughts, ladies and gents? Let me know. Thanks!**


	2. Finding a New Normal

**This is a lot shorter than the first chapter, but at least it's something, right? Tell me what you think, whether good or bad. I respect all your opinions (though I tend to respect nice opinions a bit more!)Thank you to everyone who reviewed, subscribed to story alert, or favorited. I love you guys.**

**It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's...oh. It's just a disclaimer. yuck.  
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"Why don't you guys ever just talk about things?"

Tim was as surprised as his colleagues at the words that had burst forth from his mouth, breaking the stony silence that seemed to have followed them from the office into the airplane.

Tony and Ziva's heads swiveled simultaneously, on the same page even while throwing the book at each other. "What?"

The two spoke in unison, then turned to lock eyes for a long, angry second. Finally, Ziva looked away to address Tim, leaving Tony to smirk triumphantly and lean back in his seat.

"I am sorry, McGee. What did you say?"

Tim again got the sense that Ziva's courtesy had absolutely nothing to do with being polite. But after an hour and a half of watching his co-workers glare at each other over the top of his head, he was beyond trying to ease the tension.

He'd finally gotten a reality check, and while his sympathies still lay with that minority who just wanted things to go back to normal, his brain was telling him that that just wasn't going to happen. Something had changed, and Tony and Ziva were still trying, in their own screwed up - not to mention _loud_ - way, to work their heads around it.

So maybe it was better just to accept that normal had simply ceased to exist, embrace the change, and get used to it as quickly as possible. Finding a new normal, so to speak.

"Yes, McMumble. Got something you'd like to share with the class?" Tim knew from the warning look in Tony's eyes that the man was telling him to watch where he was going, because some major boundaries had just been trampled.

But there was no going back, not when Tim was in such desperate need of a cup of coffee, not when the prospect of a long, hard case loomed in the immediate future. So he steam-rolled blindly on.

"Yes, I do, Tony. I have spent a week, a whole seven days-"

"That _is _how long a week is, McMathematician."

Two 'Mc' jokes in one minute. Tony was uncomfortable. He could tell Tim had reached his limit, and he wasn't sure he liked where the geek was going with this. For that matter, _Tim_ wasn't sure he liked where he was going with this. But it was for the best. They could put that on his tombstone. _Here lies Timothy McGee, who unwisely provoked an ex- Mossad assassin and her combat partner… It was for the best. _

So he pushed on. "I have spent a _week_ watching you guys stare each other down and I've had enough! Do you ever actually _talk _about things and not just expect each other to know exactly how you're feeling - and, no," Tim added as Ziva opened her mouth, "screaming at each other in the middle of the office does not count as talking. I'm sick of this, do you hear me? You guys are adults, aren't you? So start acting like them!"

The stunned silence that followed gave Tim just enough time to think _Good God, what have I done? _And then the two set in.

"Whoo. McVertebrate's showing some backbone." Tony whistled and joked it off in a classic deflection, slapping Tim on the back a little too forcefully to make his point. "What happened, Timmy? Don't like it when Mommy and Daddy fight?"

"If you are implying that I am 'Mommy'…" Ziva began, then caught herself. "I am sorry, Tim," she apologized, real concern in her voice for once. "I did not know that we were upsetting you."

Tim knew he should have accepted the apology, but the adrenaline that accompanied confrontation had him in its grip. He couldn't seem to find the brakes on his bulldozer.

"Well, you should have!" he retorted. "You were upsetting the entire office! What, do you think you two are the only ones who can hear each other, screaming your lungs out in the middle of the bullpen? 'Cause if so, you're sadly mistaken. My eardrums will attest to that! I don't know what your problem is, but you'd better fix it, otherwise you'd better start talking to Gibbs about a transfer."

This stunned silence made the first look like one of those awful screechy CDs Abby was always playing. And this time, neither Tony nor Ziva looked prepared to laugh it off. Immediately, guilt courses through him in a tidal wave that completely overpowered the angry adrenaline. Oh, he was going to regret that.

"I'm sorry-" he began, only to be cut off by Gibbs, of all people, who had returned from the head just in time to catch an earful.

"Don't be, Tim." The older man patted him approvingly on the shoulder, then fixed his icy blue glare on Tony and Ziva. "The man's got a point. Either fix things or ask Vance about changing teams, because this sure as hell ain't working for any of us."

And, because there was really no comeback to a Gibbs glare, silence ensued for the rest of the plane ride.

Tim couldn't help but grin every time he thought back to the stunned look on Tony and Ziva's faces. Maybe now they would actually do something about whatever was going on between them.

He could see why they were surprised. He'd always been the pacifist, the one eager to avoid conflict at whatever cost, but his teammates weren't the only ones who could change.

He wasn't sure _what_ was different, but he knew that, whatever it was, it _was _different. Heck, he was sure the whole office knew at this point. Tony's lungs, while problematic in, like, the breathing department, certainly had seemed up to par when it came to yelling at top volume.

So maybe it was better just to accept that normal had simply ceased to exist, embrace the change, and get used to it as quickly as possible. Finding a new normal, so to speak... Though he wouldn't say no to a cup of coffee either.

**All feedback is appreciated! **


	3. Impetuous Actions

**Hey, all! Sorry for not updating sooner. I've been a bit busy laying around on the couch, doing nothing, and being entirely productive. Important summer stuff like that. Gotta enjoy it while I've still got the chance, right? Anyway, here's a relatively long chapter to make up for it. Thank you for all the feedback. It makes me happy.**

**Disclaimer: Not only does my genie refuse to make people fall in love or raise the dead, it refuses to resort to illegal methods so as to get me NCIS...service these days...  
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"Okay. Okay. I'm not freaking out. I'm not freaking out. I'm not-"

"Who are you trying to convince here, Cara?"

"Shut up, Jenna."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Okay. Okay. So we're suspects in a murder. Okay. Okay. Okay. I'm not freaking out. I'm not freaking out. Everything is fine. Are you freaking out? Cause I'm certainly not-" Cara broke off with a nervous giggle verging on hysteria.

"It's fine, Car," Ali said soothingly. "We're not suspects. We're just the people who found the-the body. We'll answer some questions and go home. Just like on those CSI shows."

"I don't like CSI!" Cara wailed. "I like reality TV! Real Housewives and stuff!"

"You know Real Housewives is totally contrived, right?"

"Jenna. Not helping," Alison said with a pointed glare.

Jenna sighed. "Sorry. Cara, everything will be fine. We will answer some questions, sign some papers, and be sent back to the hotel after a stern warning not to leave the state. So basically we've got ourselves an excuse to stay in Disney an extra couple of days until the case is over and a really great story to tell people when we get back home."

Cara sniffled and scrubbed furiously at her eyes. "Why can't we leave the state?"

"Because we're suspects in the case," Jenna explained patiently.

"What?" Cara burst into tears. Again. Ali smacked her forehead, winced, then smacked her friend.

"Ow!"

"Don't listen to her, Car. Everything's fine. We're not suspects, we're just…witnesses." Ali looked proud of herself for coming up with the correct term. "Jenna just watches too much TV."

"No such thing."

"Not for you anyway."

Cara sniffled, wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her t-shirt, and did her best to calm down. "Okay. Okay. Sorry. I'm fine. It's just-"

"Like something out of CSI," Jenna said happily. "Or White Collar."

"Is that the one with the really hot guy?" Cara looked up, interested. Jenna grinned at her friend.

"The one and only Neal Caffrey."

"He's cute…for an old guy," Cara said, cheering up slightly. Jenna smirked in Ali's direction. _Watch the master_.

"Totally…" the teenager turned to study the swarm of police officers and security guards that were patrolling the area, which was creepily empty. The park had been closed, and everyone had left, excepting the three girls.

"Too bad there's no one that good-looking who's actually, like, on the police squad. They're all in Hollywood, pretending to be FBI agents," Ali said sadly, eyeing one officer's questionable mustache with distaste.

"Who're they?" Cara was looking in the opposite direction of her friends, towards two vans making their bumpy way across the cobblestone streets of Magic Kingdom.

"N…CIS." Ali craned her neck as she read the initials emblazoned on the first of the vans. "Who's that?"

"Not CSI," Jenna said gloomily.

"Ha. That's pretty good," Cara giggled. "Except it's not NCSI. It's NCIS."

Jenna looked blankly at her blond friend. "What?"

"Your joke. N, like not, CSI…" Cara trailed off at her friend's confused look. "You weren't joking?"

"I'm insulted that you think I can't make a better joke than that," Jenna informed her friend. "I could have made a joke if I wanted to…but I was too busy moping that I won't be meeting the cast of CSI anytime soon."

"Oh." Cara shrugged. "Okay."

Ali had stayed out of the conversation, as she was busy watching the progress of the vans. They'd come to a halt outside of the ride, and two older men had stepped out of their respective trucks.

The taller, leaner of the two, a silver-haired guy with a Marine haircut, strode directly towards the swarm of police officers, holding up something that looked like a wallet, with a badge imbedded in the leather.

The other man, this one shorter with spectacles and scrubs, headed towards the back of the van and opened the doors, speaking to a tall, gangly young guy who had gotten out of the driver's seat in a Scottish brogue.

"I would compliment you on your navigational skills, Mr. Palmer, but I daresay that it is rather difficult to get lost here. There wasn't much navigation involved, now was there?"

"I don't know," the younger man replied, fiddling with his glasses, which reminded Ali of Harry Potter's. "I got lost in here when I was ten. I was crying on a stoop, and Thumper, the character, found me and brought me to the main offices to call my mom. And he signed my t-shirt."

The older man smiled, made some remark to the extent of, "Ah, Thumper the rabbit. A beloved character of a beloved movie. Did you know, Mr. Palmer, that the movie _Bambi_ was based on a book?"

The gangly man, apparently named Mr. Palmer, stopped what he was doing to fix the older man with a look of interest. "Really, Doctor?"

"Ah, yes. Bambi, a Life in the Woods. It was originally published in Austria in 1923. As a matter of fact, many of Walt Disney's animated movies were first books…"

The man continued his story, but Ali's attention had been caught by movement in the first van. The silver-haired guy was still talking to an angry looking group of police officers, but three younger agents were busily unloading the van.

The first was a tall, thin guy with light brown hair. He was busily pulling on a black windbreaker with the NCIS logo stitched in white thread on it, being careful not to look at the other two people.

Jenna nudged Ali and gestured to the other man in the group. "What were you saying about cops not being hot?"

Ali studied the second man carefully. He was, indeed, quite good-looking, with short brown hair and chiseled features.

The third cop was a woman, and pretty in an exotic way, with olive skin and dark hair that was pulled back in a severe bun.

"Why do you think they're here?" Cara asked, watching as the newcomers unloaded gear, pulled on windbreakers and caps, then headed over to join the law enforcement party that seemed to be playing out, if rather unenthusiastically, in front of the ride entrance.

"Maybe they're in charge of extraterrestrial happenings," Jenna voiced. "Maybe the It's a Small World dolls are behind the murder."

"Only problem with that being that they're _dolls_, who can't even move without machinery, let alone kill someone," Ali cut in dryly. Jenna deflated slightly.

"Maybe they're taking over the case," Cara suggested, watching as the Scottish doctor and his geeky assistant headed into the ride with one or two of the Disney personnel, toting some strange looking gear and a stretcher.

"Grey-haired guy looks kinda scary," Ali noted. The silver-haired man did, indeed, look rather daunting as he issued orders to his team.

"Oh no. Cute-cop's coming over here," Jenna whispered frantically, nodding her head towards the approaching man. "How's my hair look?"

Alison eyed her friend's curly brown ponytail, then raised an eyebrow. "You realize you are fourteen? And this guy's like forty?"

"Obviously Jenna doesn't mind older men," Cara said dryly. "After all, she said Harrison Ford was hot."

"He is!" Jenna protested. "The grey hair makes him look…distinguished! Besides, anyone who has seen Star Wars has to admit that Han Solo is gorgeous!"

"I'm a Real Housewives kind of girl, remember?" Cara rolled her eyes.

"You've never seen Star Wars. You're kidding me."

"And you have?"

Jenna shrugged. "Two creepy brothers, remember?"

"Oh, please," Ali scoffed. "We all know that you offer to babysit your brothers just so that you can force them to watch action movies with you."

"I'm exposing them to the classics!" Jenna defended herself. "It's educational!"

"Star Wars is educational?"

"While I hate to interrupt the girl gossip, ladies," a voice cut in. All three girls swiveled to face the good-looking cop they'd been watching.

"It's not a problem. We were talking about _Star Wars_," Ali said, rolling her eyes at the cop and trying not to look nervous. For some strange reason, the man's bright green eyes lit up.

"You're kidding. You like those movies?"

"_She _does," Cara said, pointing accusatorially at Jenna. The man grinned, displaying white teeth that practically glowed.

"Smart girl. Which one's your favorite?"

Jenna answered promptly, "All three of the originals. Harrison Ford is to die for."

The cop nodded his approval. "Yeah. You can't beat the originals. You like Ford?"

"To the point of obsession," Alison answered dryly. Jenna shrugged ruefully.

The handsome guy chuckled. "Seen the new one with him in it? Cowboys and Aliens?"

"Three times," Cara moaned. "She dragged us with her and squealed every time the man came onscreen."

"I haven't seen it yet," the guy shook his head disgustedly. "We've been working late hours all week. Was it good?"

Jenna shrugged. "So-so. Ford was fantastic, of course."

"Worth seeing?"

"DiNozzo!"

The cop turned to face the exotic-looking woman who was approaching. "Can I help you, David?" he asked stiffly.

"We have a case," the woman said shortly in an accented voice, glaring. Ali, Jenna, and Cara exchanged bewildered glances when neither of the agents made any attempt to break eye-contact.

"I know, David. That's why I'm working. Maybe you should do the same?" the man, presumably DiNozzo, answered, looking down into the woman's face exasperatedly.

She took moved slightly closer, staring darkly up at him. "Gibbs sent me over to inform you that if you do not stop gabbing about movies and start doing your job, Ducky would have more than one body to bring back to Washington."

Now it was the man's turn to step closer. "And Gibbs couldn't tell me that himself?"

Cara glanced at her friends. Alison was shifting awkwardly from foot to foot and averting her eyes, as if embarrassed to be intruding on something that was obviously deeper than a reprimand delivery. Jenna, however, was watching the scene with the same rapt attention that she absorbed movies, her mouth slightly agape.

"No." The woman frowned in irritation that, for once, did not seem to be directed at her co-worker. "He-he sent me over to…_apologize_," she confessed, pronouncing the word as if it were a curse.

The man blinked. "For what?"

David rolled her eyes. "Let me see, DiNozzo. What have you been overreacting about all week?"

DiNozzo smirked triumphantly, even a bit maliciously. "Aha. So the fearless leader agrees that you were being stupid?"

The look on the woman's face was venomous. "You do not have to gloat over it."

The man, obviously gloating, cupped a hand around his ear, feigning to have misheard the female cop. "Gloat over what? What do I have to gloat over, Agent David?"

A long-suffering sigh accompanied the next statement. "I admit that I acted impetuously."

DiNozzo grinned. "So, you're saying that I was right and that you, humble probie, were wrong?"

Apparently this was too much too soon, especially after the rather half-hearted apology. The girls jumped back in alarm as, suddenly, the muscled cop was on his knees, his arms pinned behind his back by the diminutive foreign woman. She twisted his arm slightly, and the man grimaced.

"No," the woman hissed, putting her mouth by the man's ear seductively. "I am saying that, whether or not Gibbs agrees with my actions, they were necessary. I am sorry, only, that you disagree."

With that, the woman let the man up again. "Now, Tony," she said calmly. "I believe you should get those witness statements together before Gibbs decides to make good on his threat." And with a nod to the girls, and a gentle slap to the man's cheek, she sauntered away.

The cop's green eyes followed the woman's retreating form for a long moment before turning back to the girls, who weren't sure whether to be scared or amused.

"That maniac was my partner, Agent David," he said conversationally, eyes still on the foreign woman. "She usually pretends to like me a bit better than that."

**Well? What do you think? I wanted to get an outsider's perspective on Tiva. Oh, and all the Harrison Ford worship is due to watching too much Indiana Jones over the weekend. I tend to agree with Jenna's theories on the awesomeness of that particular actor. ;-) But, anyway, review, please. It'll motivate me to write faster. **


	4. A Small, Small World

**This is the bare minimum in the Tiva department, but at least it's an update, right? Sorry that I'm not more reliable with my updates, but I'm really loving where I'm going with Simon Says, my other story, and I couldn't bring myself to cheat on it. We make some advancements with the case here, and say goodbye to our teenage guest stars. Next chapter should be mostly case, but Chapter 6 is where I've got some major Tiva confrontation planned. At the risk of sounding melodramatic and somewhat creepy, all will be revealed.**

**Disclaimer: Here's the plan. Capture whoever it is that has the authority to give me ownership of NCIS, tie them to a chair, and sing It's a Small World in their ear, 24-7, until they give in. I'd be surprised if they held out ten minutes. **

"Anyway," said the very good-looking Agent Tony DiNozzo, wiggling his shoulders and wincing when his back cracked from the movement._._ "Which one of you found the body in the first place?"

Cara raised a hand slowly. "Um, that would be me."

The guy nodded. "Okay. Name?"

"Cara Veronica Jennings," she answered. "I'm fourteen. Do you need, like, my birthday and stuff? Or my social security number, because I actually have that, along with my medical information, written down on an index card in my purse."

"Her mom's really over-protective," Jenna explained. She turned to Cara with a frown. "Your middle name's Veronica?"

"Um, no to medical information and stuff," the NCIS agent answered before the conversation could progress any further. "All I need is your name and the address of the place where you're staying. Would you happen to have _that_ written on an index card anywhere, Miss Jennings?"

Cara made a face, mentally cursing her mother's organization. "Yeah. Hold on." She dug around in her small, faux-leather bag for a moment, then pulled out a sheaf of hot pink index cards, bundled together with two rubber bands. Tony couldn't help but raise an eyebrow.

"When I say protective, I mean _protective_," Jenna added helpfully. Cara made a face at her, and Ali shushed her.

"Okay." Tony accepted the index card, and returned to his questioning. "And you two?"

"Jenna Leigh Gallagher," the brunette responded.

"And I'm Alison Rose Kinney," the dirty-blonde finished.

"And what are three fourteen-year-old girls doing in Disney World by themselves?" the agent questioned, notating the witnesses' names.

"Ali's mom is here on business, and we're staying with her in a condo about two hours away," Jenna answered. "She drove us down and checked us into a hotel room at the Grand Floridian. She's picking us up the day after tomorrow, after her meeting."

"Unless, do we have to stay where we are?" Alison questioned hesitantly. "I mean, since we're suspects and stuff?"

Agent DiNozzo smirked. "You're not suspects. You're a couple of kids who now have a great story to tell people when you get back to wherever you're from."

"New York," Cara supplied, looking supremely relieved.

"I told you, Jen," Ali whispered. Jenna made a face, disappointed. At this point they probably wouldn't even make it on the news.

"Anything else you can think to tell me? About the body? Was there anyone suspicious near or on the ride that you can think of?" DiNozzo continued. The girls thought for a moment.

"Well, there was that annoying lady behind us," Ali said slowly. "She seemed pretty impatient to get on the ride."

Jenna disagreed. "Nah. That was just a mother in desperate need of some caffeine. I see it all the time at home."

The agent, however, seemed to think this might be important. "Got a description of her?"

"She was carrying a screaming baby, and there was an apple juice stain on her shirt," Jenna said. Cara added that the woman had been blonde with brown roots.

"Anything else?"

"Does that Agent David lady always beat you up like that?" Cara asked teasingly. The agent frowned.

"No. I was perfectly capable of handling her, but I didn't want to scare you kids."

"I have two brothers. Nothing scares me anymore."

Agent DiNozzo grinned. "Then you haven't met my partner," he said. "She's a scary chick. Well, if you remember anything else, give us a call."

He handed the girl's a business card, and waved over a police officer. "These girls are ready to go home."

As the police officer moved in, and the agent sauntered away, Jenna whispered, "Was I the only one who saw something going on there?"

"Going on where?"

Cara rolled her eyes. "Way to be oblivious, Ali."

"No, seriously! What? Saw what going on?"

Jenna sighed. "Never mind."

…

Nowhere on Timothy McGee's list of things that he would like to accomplish before he died - pieced together mentally on _those _days, when death seemed imminent - was there a need to slog through an abandoned _It's a Small World_ ride to find a dead body. It was creepy and seemed almost sacrilegious. Up close, the dolls were just as unnerving as they were from the waterway.

He found Palmer and Ducky crouched on the ledge beside the emergency exit, hidden beneath a fake bridge, with the body. Ducky looked up as he approached and waved him over.

"Ah, Timothy! I was just remarking on the incredible craftsmanship visible on these automatons. Did you know, Timothy, Mr. Palmer, that each and every one of these dolls' has the exact same facial structure?"

"Wow. That's . . . really interesting, Ducky," Tim remarked, studying the faces of one of the dolls and shuddering slightly. The vacant eyes that looked back at him were just as creepy now as they had been when he was a boy of ten.

"Indeed," Ducky continued. "The faces were designed this way, to promote the idea of a small world. The song itself was written in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and-"

After that, Tim stopped listening. Palmer continued to stare with rapt attention at the doctor, nodding occasionally, as if truly interested.

After a moment or so of nonstop discoursing on the Cuban Missile Crisis, which quickly and bafflingly transitioned into talking about Ducky's childhood in Scotland, Tim began to wonder if he should break into the conversation, so that some actual work could be done. He was still debating this when Gibbs arrived, marching along, apparently not the least bit concerned that one of those spooky dolls could very well be planning to reach out and grab him at any moment. Tim wondered if dolls were immune to the Gibbs-glare.

"What do you got, Duck?" Gibbs asked, approaching the group where they crouched at the edge of the platform. The body was lying face-down in the knee-deep water below.

"Jethro!" Ducky turned with a smile to greet his friend. "I was just informing Mr. Palmer on-"

"Duck," Gibbs cut in tactfully. "What does that have to do with our guy?"

"Nothing," Ducky said agreeably, turning to study the body mournfully. "I was merely waiting for someone with a camera to arrive before I moved our poor, unfortunate soul."

Mr. Palmer chuckled. "Good one, doctor. Unfortunate soul, like the song in The Little Mermaid."

"Redone by the Jonas Brothers," chimed in another voice disgustedly from behind. "It's a travesty, I tell you."

"DiNozzo."

Tony grinned at Gibbs. "Yeah, boss?"

"Shut up."

"May I retrieve the body now, Jethro?" Ducky asked pleasantly. Gibbs motioned to Tony to snap a few pictures, then nodded to Ducky.

"Go ahead."

Carefully, Ducky and Palmer eased the dead man's body from the water, and Tim moved forward with the fingerprint scanner. After a moment of whirring, the little mechanism beeped.

"Okay. This is Petty Officer, First Class, Jared Mendel," McGee announced, studying the picture that accompanied the information on the minute screen of the scanner and comparing it to that of the dead man nearby. He was a young, good-looking man, with a strong jaw and laughing blue eyes. His short hair was a sandy blonde.

"Got a time of death, Duck?"

Ducky studied the liver probe, then announced, "He was brought to his untimely demise approximately six and a half hours ago, Jethro. While I cannot be certain until a full autopsy is performed, I would chance a guess and say that he was drowned. There are significant bruisings here and here," Ducky gestured to matching discolored areas of skin on either side of the man's neck, "that suggest he was held under until sufficient asphyxiation had occurred."

Tony wormed his way to the front of the group and took a couple of pictures of the aforementioned bruises.

"Anything else, Duck?"

Ducky shook his head. "I cannot determine anything further until I am back in autopsy, Jethro. Speaking of which, Mr. Palmer, we had best hasten if we wish to get a start on our Petty Officer before nightfall. We have a plane to catch."

"Of course, Doctor," Palmer said obediently, hurrying to assist Ducky in hoisting the body onto the stretcher.

Seeing that they were only obstructing the doctors from doing what they did best, Gibbs gestured to Tim and Tony to follow him back out of the ride. "Find anything else?" he questioned.

Tony shook his head. "Nothing, boss. The girls saw something they thought was a doll and went to report it. Turns out it wasn't a doll. They couldn't tell us anything else, but I got their room number just in case."

Gibbs nodded, processing this, then turned to McGee. "Tim?"

"Nothing weird as far as litter goes, boss," Tim reported. "Just a couple of plastic bottles and a whole lot of loose change floating around in the water."

The three men exited the ride, stepping out into the mid-afternoon Florida sunlight, where Ziva was waiting. "Gibbs, I questioned the security, but there are no security cameras in the ride. We are on our own."

"What about in the stores nearby?" Gibbs asked. "Anything with a view of Small World?"

Ziva shook her head. "I looked, but there is nothing."

Gibbs thought for a moment, then nodded. "Okay. David, talk to security. See if anything hinky happened around here in the last couple days. DiNozzo, I want witness statements from whoever went to check out the body when the girls reported it. McGee, you're going back to the villa with me. I want anything and everything you can find me about our Petty Officer."

Gibbs started away, then turned back as a thought hit him. "And find someplace where you can buy those damn Mickey ears for Abby, or she'll never let it go."

**Sorry for not updating sooner. What do you think of the chapter? It's not my favorite, but I had to make some advancements with the case before I got to the fun stuff. Review, please, and make my day. **


	5. The Extended Metaphor of Doom

**I am a despicable human being, and I offer no excuses, except that I've been busy with life. And had writer's block. And got turned off this story after a vacation to Disney was cancelled, leaving me cranky and irritable. But, other than that, I have no excuses. I'm trying to get back into the swing of things, however, so I wrote this up. A nice long, Tiva-filled chapter just for you guys. Plus I bashed Pocahontas II A LOT. Because I hated that movie. Anyway . . . **

**Disclaimer: I was gonna just steal NCIS, but the creepy cricket told me to let my conscience be my guide. And since I don't want to get swallowed by a whale . . .**

Much to the team's chagrin, Tony sang _It's a Small World_ through out the entire car ride to the river-side bungalow where one of the resorts had kindly allowed the team to set up shop. And since Gibbs had offered to drive Ducky and Palmer to the airport, there was no one there with proper qualifications to carry out the vicious death threats that Ziva was uttering.

"I am going to tear your liver out through your eye sockets," Ziva promised through gritted teeth. Tony's smile widened, and he sang all the louder.

"_There is just one moon and one golden sun, and a smile means friendship to everyone-"_

McGee took a deep breath in and tried not to shriek on the exhale as Tony started in on the second verse, this time in Spanish.

By the time they had reached the bungalow, a octagonal wooden structure situated on stilts beside the river, wrapped artistically around a tree to further enhance the rural theme, Tony's Spanish had failed him, and so he had switched into Italian mid-verse. When the proper words did not supply themselves, the man filled in with off-tune humming.

Ziva had stopped speaking after a particularly graphic explanation of just how she was going to seperate Tony from his appendages, which had literally had vomit rising in McGee's throat. She spent the remainder of the ride in rock-hard, icy silence.

McGee flung himself from the van the moment Tony stopped the car, promptly tripping over an inconveniently-situated pebble and wrenching his ankle.

His curses were more than enough to encourage Tony to whip out his best 'Condescending Yet Concerned' impression, as well as 'McSailor's Mouth.'

Tim looked up at the 'villa' the team was staying at, torn between excitement and irritation. "Seriously?" he said finally, coming to a compromise between his inner child and the mature side of him.

Tony, too, was staring up at the team's new accommodations, though his expression was much less mature. He was indeed grinning like a fool. 'This may just be the coolest thing I've ever seen in my entire life," the man announced finally, "and I've watched _Inception_."

"That is the one with DiCaprio, yes?" Ziva asked disinterestedly, pulling a suitcase from the trunk.

"Yeah," Tony agreed, not looking away from 'the coolest thing he'd ever seen.'

"He is far from _cool_," Ziva said critically, "I was thinking on the opposite side of the thermometer."

Tony scoffed, "All you women have a thing for DiCaprio. But that's beside the point. I mean, you can't describe a giant tree house as 'hot.'"

"What do you mean 'all you women?'" Ziva demanded, sounding indignant.

"I mean," said Tony patiently, "that all it takes is a pair of blue eyes, and you're all over the guy like peanut butter on jelly."

"That is-" Ziva broke off from what had sounded like a heated retort that would have, no doubt, spurred another argument, and looked at McGee. "He does have nice eyes," she finished lamely after a moment.

Tony shrugged. "Matter of opinion, I guess."

The conversation trailed off awkwardly, and McGee felt obligated to break the silence. After all, it had been his outburst on the plane that had brought about this forced truce. "Are we seriously staying in this thing?"

Tony looked up at the 'thing,' an octagonal structure set ten feet in the air and constructed around a tree, and grinned. "This is like _The Swiss Family Robinson_, you know, the-"

"The book?" Ziva cut in slyly, slamming the trunk.

"No," Tony shot back, "the movie. 1960, with-"

Ziva silently heaved a bag over her shoulder and started off before the monologue could progress any further.

"Damn it," Tony said quietly, more to himself than to anyone else, "I hate it when she ignores me."

McGee popped the trunk and scooped up an armful of carry-on bags, wondering why he had looked upon family vacations with such distaste as a teenager.

This was worse - far, far worse.

...

"Talk to me!" Gibbs barked, striding into the bungalow holding a cardboard tray of coffees as well as the hotel's complimentary Mickey Mouse-shaped, chocolate-covered rice krispy treats, which sent McGee's mouth into salivation over-drive.

Ziva neatly caught the rice krispy treat that Gibbs tossed her from the kitchen peninsula where she had set up shop with her laptop and cell phone.

"Petty Officer, First Class, Jared Mendel, aged 27. He was married last week at an Anglican church in Newport, Rhode Island to Sasha Walker-"

"-also aged 27," DiNozzo cut in with a smirk, earning himself a glare from Ziva and a Mickey-on-a-stick from Gibbs. "Sasha works as a secretary for a local newspaper, and takes internet law school classes."

"They flew down yesterday," interjected McGee, eager to throw in his two cents and receive a dessert of his own. "Checked in the Polynesian Resort at around 1800 last night. They were picked up by several security cameras, as well as a couple employees, leaving at about 0730 this morning for Magic Kingdom."

"And that's when we lose 'em," Tony finished through a mouthful of krispy treat.

Gibbs raised an eyebrow. "Both of them?"

Ziva nodded, sliding down from her perch on the breakfast bar stool. "Yes. We have video feed of Sasha and Mendel buying water bottles at a vendor just down the street from It's a Small World. Presumably they entered the ride next, and that is the last we see of them."

"Until Jared Mendel shows up dead."

McGee nodded. "Anything from Ducky or Abby, boss?"

"Duck will check in once he's landed," Gibbs answered. "Abby wanted me to remind you to wear sunscreen and take lots of pictures."

Tony did very little to hide his amusement at this, earning him a brief headslap from Gibbs.

"Tell me you got more than that."

"I am tracking down the cast members who were on duty around the time Mr. and Mrs. Mendel entered the ride," Ziva announced.

"I'm looking into Mendel's job, possible enemies he might have had," Tony said, and innocently pretended that he had not been debating the pros and cons of Disney movies for the past two hours.

Gibbs nodded, and turned to McGee with a raised eyebrow, prompting him silently to speak.

Tim cleared his throat awkwardly. "I put out a BOLO for Mrs. Mendel, boss. And I'm looking into financial records."

Gibbs didn't look impressed, so McGee added hopefully, "And I got a Minnie Mouse headband for Abby."

Apparently Gibbs was satisfied, and so the room fell back into silence as they went about their business in their respective work spaces - Ziva perched at the counter, McGee kneeling by the coffee table, Tony laying on his stomach on the living room rug.

The silence lasted all of three seconds before Tony began humming the particularly epic 'Be a Man' song from Mulan, which broke off abruptly as a crumpled piece of Mickey Mouse stationary made contact with his head.

Tony yelped, Ziva smirked, Gibbs poured another cup of coffee. McGee resigned himself to an evening of psychological torture and went back to work.

...

"I mean, not only was the entire plotline a flawed, disgusting mess of holes in the plotline and atrocious music, the animation was horrible!" Tony raged, rolling onto his back and pointing a finger into the air to better illustrate his point.

Gibbs had disappeared with a extra-large mug of coffee and his cell phone, attempting to explain to Abby that they were there on a case, not on vacation, and therefore would not be collecting signatures for her.

The instant their fearless leader had stepped out the door, Tony had started in on a violent bashing of all Disney sequels in general, Pocahontas II in particular.

"It is historically accurate," Ziva snipped, not looking up.

"It was true love! So what if it wasn't historically accurate?"

"It would not have worked out anyway."

Tony sat up, looking flabbergasted. McGee, sensing things were about to become ugly, headed into the kitchen to get more coffee.

"Say that to my face," Tony said, sliding onto the barstool beside Ziva with a look of pure outrage set upon his face. Apparently even animated films qualified as movies in Tony's book; and, therefore, could not be criticized in the slightest.

Ziva looked up with a mildly disinterested air, leaning forward until there was no more than a centimeter between her face and her partner. "It would not have worked out."

McGee tried his best to appear busy, mixing unnecessary amounts of sugar into his coffee and doing his utmost not to stare.

Tony was unfazed by the violation of personal space. "And why not?"

Ziva shrugged. "She was raised differently than he, in a different world. He would not have understood the motivations behind her actions."

"Well maybe if she'd attempt to _explain _herself, he would have understood a bit better," Tony said sharply.

"They do not see eye to eye."

He shrugged. "Men are always taller than women in movies. That's just how it goes."

Ziva sighed. "That is not what I meant. They . . . did not speak the same language. They could not possibly be able to communicate their feelings."

Tim winced, knowing what was coming. Sure enough, Tony adapted his best 'Grandmother Willow' voice, and set in:

"_Liiisten with your heart, you will understaaand_ . . ."

Ziva waved this musical interlude away with a brisk whack to the back of the head. "Trees do not sing. You cannot _listen with your heart_, except in fairytales."

McGee took an awkward sip of his coffee, and nearly gagged. _Way_ _too much sugar . . ._

"You don't believe in fairytales?" Tony asked, brow furrowing pensively.

Ziva shrugged. "All I am saying, Tony, is that real life does not work that way."

"And why not?" he challenged, crossing his arms stubbornly.

Ziva sighed. "He is a restless adventurer. He travels in search of something new, only to grow bored and move on once again. That was not what she wanted."

"Maybe he was just waiting for the right . . . land," Tony said softly, the weighted pause between words adding to McGee's conviction that Pocahontas and John Smith were no longer the subject of this conversation.

"But he leaves. At the end of the sequel, they give him a boat, and he goes off to see the world. He leaves her behind without a second thought."

"But that's what I'm saying!" Tony broke in, pounding on the counter triumphantly, as if Ziva has just made his point for him. "The sequel is a load of crap. The animation's so bad they don't even look like the same characters. Everyone is brutally out-of-character. The real John Smith wouldn't have done that! Not if he really loved her!"

"He is only a character, Tony," Ziva said finally, dismissively, warningly. This subject is, as far as she is concerned, closed.

Tony looked briefly disappointed. "Maybe Pocahontas needs to have a little more faith in poetic justice and character-development. People change. Smith changed. She changed him. People don't just regress that dramatically, except in crappy sequels."

"Maybe Pocahontas lost the magic," Ziva said quietly, looking back at her computer screen with an almost vulnerable look in her eyes.

"Or maybe she just needs to remember how it works," Tony countered.

McGee absent-mindedly took another sip of coffee as he marveled at Tony's uncanny ability to stumble across the perfect metaphor for this tangled mess his teammates called a relationship.

He choked audibly at the sickly-sweet concoction, spewing coffee all down his front, onto the floor, breaking the spell of the elaborate, extended metaphor.

"Way to go, McHeimlich," Tony said finally, with a vaguely hollow smirk, and got to his feet.

McGee sighed, dumped his coffee down the drain, and went to start brewing another cup. Ziva began typing, fingers slamming down on the keyboard with violently audible clicks. Tony began singing 'Colors of the Wind' under his breath.

Thunder rolled outside the window, and suddenly the rain was pouring down.

Tim shook his head, and wondered why even the slightest occurrence now seemed to be some sort of twisted metaphor for the day.

All this author stuff was really starting to go to his head . . .

**So I offer apologies once more, as well as a plea for reviews which I really don't deserve. Seriously, I feel so bad about this. But anyone who wants me to continue, drop me a line, please. You can beat me around the head with a figurative rolling pin if you wish. Just let me know what you thought, too. If enough people want me to continue, I'll update again ASAP. **


	6. Storm Clouds

**Yeah, I know I suck at updating. I'm sorry. But I've got the case moving along, and I've brought back my lovely teenage guest stars. I think I've got a handle on where this story is going, so hopefully I'll be able to stick to my guns and follow through with another chapter sooner rather than later. Anyway, this one's REALLY long, as a sort of please-don't-hate-me-forever bribe, so. Please don't hate me forever. Love and all that to all my reviewers, please continue to let me know what you thought. Seriously, just berate me for my terrible updating habits. I totally deserve it. **

**Disclaimer - Poor, unfortunate soul, I don't own NCIS. So sad, so true. :-( *weeps***

Alison Kinney wasn't entirely sure how it had come about, but she was fairly certain that the handsome boy in the Marlins baseball cap was flirting with her. And this was something that she had no intentions of deterring.

"Do you live around here?" inquired the handsome boy whose name Ali could not, for the life of her, remember. She smiled, hoping there were no remnants of the afternoon's cotton candy marring her teeth, and tried not to let her face flush.

"No, actually. I'm a New Yorker. Me and my friends are just hanging in Disney for the rest of the week while my mom works."

"My friends and _I_," Cara sing-songed reprimandingly, appearing out of nowhere with here blonde hair tied up in a giant red Minnie Mouse bow, holding towering chocolate ice cream cones in each hand and reeking of sunscreen. She stopped abruptly at the sight of Anonymous Cutie in Baseball Cap, and then raised her eyebrows at Ali in approval. "_Hi_."

Anonymous Cutie in Baseball Cap grinned boyishly and returned the greeting as Ali gratefully accepted her cone from Cara, smiling to herself. She wouldn't begrudge Cara a moment of two of flirting, even if she was horning in on _Ali's _man, because if the girl was flirting it meant things were going back to normal.

And, honestly, that was all Ali wanted at this point.

"This is my friend Cara," Alison said, upon a prompting, bony elbow to the ribs from the blonde girl in question. "She came down to Florida with another of my friends and me."

"My friends and _I_," Cara repeated once more before setting to work on her already-dripping ice cream. "God, Ali."

"Stop trying to be smart, Cara," said Jenna affectionately, skipping up to the small group wearing a chocolate ice cream mustache and a light-up Mickey Mouse headband that had been crooning a ever-increasingly tinny version of the Mickey Mouse club theme song since its purchase only hours before. "Ali was right."

"Thank you, Jenna," Ali said smugly, before turning back to the Anonymous Cutie, who was eyeing Jenna's questionable choice of headgear. "This is Jenna. Jenna, this is . . . " she trailed off uncertainly.

"I'm Craig," Anonymous Cutie supplied with another adorable, dimply grin in her direction. "Nice to meet you." This was spoken almost entirely to Alison, and she couldn't help the slight smile that crept onto her face.

The Anonymous Cutie Named Craig was most definitely flirting.

Jenna was unimpressed. She cocked her head, flipped the switch on her headband to finally, finally put an end to the tinny soundtrack that had been floating around her head like a demonic aura all afternoon, and raised a critical eyebrow. "You like the Marlins?"

Craig self-consciously adjusted his ball cap so that it sat at a more rakish angle on his blonde head, and smiled uncertainly at Jenna's ice cream mustache. "Yeah. You don't?"

The brunette snorted as if his question physically wounded her. "Yankees fan," she explained cheerfully, raising a tanned arm and displaying a collage of friendship bracelets, temporary tattoos, four obnoxiously-colored scrunchies, and several thick rubber bracelets emblazoned with the New York Yankee's logo.

Craig made a face. "Yankees suck."

Jenna's face darkened into something akin to one of the ominous Florida storm clouds converging overhead in the early evening sky. "Who are you anyway?" she demanded, looking very much put out. She turned adamantly to her two blonde friends. "Where did we pick this guy up?"

"He's Craig," explained Cara helpfully. "He was flirting with Ali when I came back with the ice cream cones."

Ali emitted something like a horrified squeak and turned fiercely fuscia beneath her tan. "Cara!"

Cara looked affronted. "What? Oh, were we still pretending you were merely having a casual conversation with a random passerby who just happened to be precisely your type and of the opposite sex? Whoops, my bad."

Now Craig was looking very flushed as well, and Jenna was giggling into her ice cream cone, the chocolate having spread from her upper lip to her chin and the tip of her nose as well, like a melty version of war paint.

"I . . . think it's going to rain," said Craig finally, in a terribly transparent attempt at changing the subject. This, of course, only made Jenna chortle all the more behind her heaping mountain of ice cream.

Ali, thankful for a change in subject, was all too anxious to agree. "We should hurry if we want to hit Splash Mountain again before the rain starts," she urged the giggling duo who apparently were her friends.

"Splash Mountain? I was heading that way myself," said Craig in a tone of mild surprise and delight that Alison suspected was entirely fake. But the boy really _did _have incredible dimples, so she simply smiled and suggested they walk together.

Jenna and Cara exchanged extremely subtle eyebrow maneuvers over their ice cream, looking half-irritated, half-amused at Ali's new 'friend.' However, after Anonymous Cutie Named Craig revealed that his father held some important position or other in the Disney franchise - and thus the boy was equipped with a weird access bracelet thingy that served as an automatic fast-pass at several of the rides - the girls decided, via eyebrow message, that Craig really wasn't so bad after all, despite his poor taste in baseball teams and very much transparent flirting techniques.

Jenna shrugged, turned back on her whining musical headband, and skipped ahead, holding hands with Cara and singing, "M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E!"

Ali breathed in through her nose, taking calming yoga breaths, and turned back to Craig with a slight blush and a smile.

…

Leroy Jethro Gibbs was normally a fairly rational man.

Really, he was.

If properly caffeinated, with a couple hours of sleep and a finger or two of bourbon under his belt, he was all bluster and very little bite. His team was his family, and maybe he was the cranky, gruff uncle with a penchant for physical punishment, but that didn't mean he didn't love them any less.

It was only during cases like this, on days like these - when the temperature was pushing three digits and the humidity had reached levels previously unknown to man - when Gibbs truly began to ponder a bloody tripe-homicide followed shortly by a midnight flight to Mexico where he could live out his days in a boat on the Gulf with a shotgun in his lap and a glass of alcohol at hand.

This much entertained route of action was becoming more and more tempting as his Senior Field Agent launched into the second verse of his mocking, falsetto rendition of _Can You Feel the Love Tonight? _

In the backseat, Ziva was making promise after vehement promise that Tony would be feeling something _else _by the end of the evening - and it would be far less pleasurable than _love_ - unless he stopped singing _THIS INSTANT_.

Tony merely turned up the volume on the radio station he had gleefully discovered, which played Disney movie soundtracks twenty-four hours a day, and sang all the louder, until Gibbs was very much in favor of allowing Ziva to carry out such promises, and perhaps even providing a solid alibi and means of weaponry for his female agent.

It seemed that since their arrival in Florida the day before, DiNozzo's antics had become more and more outrageous, until Gibbs was certain there was only two explanations for such shenanigans. One - DiNozzo had taken to guzzling Caf-Pow. Or, two - Ziva David.

The Israeli's interactions with her partner of late consisted entirely of disinterred, strained politeness as well as a more than lethal dosage of death threats, and Gibbs could tell the cold shoulder was really grating on his talkative Senior Field Agent's nerves.

Thus Tony had, in true Disney fashion, turned to song in his time of distress.

It was too bad that DiNozzo's falsetto was not quite as up-to-standards as the rest of the Disney heroes and heroines.

"So," said McGee in a forcedly casual tone, breaking through Tony's epic serenading, "Abby just emailed me, boss."

"What'd she say?" Gibbs inquired, shooting his youngest agent a grateful look in the rearview mirror.

Tim made an expressive face at the screen of his smart phone. "Well, she's now promising to kill me from the inside out unless I collect autographs from pretty much every character in Disney. Also she wants me to hug Jack Sparrow for her, but I can tell you right now that I am _not _doing that."

"If he looks anything like Johnny Depp I will be more than happy to oblige," Ziva offered, sheathing her knife now that Tony had quieted to humming at a much more tolerable volume.

"Anything of _importance_, McGee?" Gibbs asked, pretending to be irritated, although right now he felt nothing but gratitude towards Tim.

McGee consulted his phone once more. "Abby said that Ducky was right. There were huge quantities of peanut oil in Petty Officer Mendel's blood stream and ground into his pores."

Tony looked up sharply, smoothly transforming back into the competent, if easily distracted, agent that Gibbs knew and loved. "Mendel's medical records mentioned a peanut allergy. If he was having a reaction when he was drowned, he probably wouldn't have been able to put up too much resistance."

"Means our killer wasn't necessarily terribly strong," Gibbs concluded, nodding his approval to DiNozzo's thought processes.

"Which _means_," he declared triumphantly, turning to point a jubilant finger towards the occupants of the back seat, "that Mendel's wife would've been more than capable of knocking her husband off herself! Think about it - she knew about his allergy, she would have had access to him, and where is she now?" Tony banged an emphatic hand down on the dashboard. "No one knows! Boss, I'm telling you-"

Gibbs took advantage of DiNozzo's distraction and quickly flipped off the radio. "Maybe. Maybe not. Anything else, McGee?"

"Abby thinks the peanut oil might have been in Mendel's sunscreen, Boss," the young man reported, skimming through the long, overly-italicized email that was positively laden with exclamation points and emoticons of various degrees of happiness. "But there wasn't any sunscreen in Mendel's personal effects, so she can't be sure."

"Perhaps the wife has the sunscreen," Ziva suggested, biting her lower lip thoughtfully.

Her partner clapped his hands together gleefully and reached into the backseat to exchange high-fives with a reluctant Ziva. "Thank you! Finally subscribing to the DiNozzo theory, I see!"

"I am not subscribing to any theory," said Ziva acidly. "I am just proposing one of many possibilities, DiNozzo."

Gibbs and McGee winced simultaneously, although the older man's grimace was far less noticeable. DiNozzo pulled a face and flopped back into his seat like a petulant toddler or a misunderstood teenager.

"You're no fun anymore," he pouted, before flipping the radio on once more.

A collective groan of protest filled the car as Tony began to hum along to a peppy, reggae version of _Under the Sea_.

…

Patricia Donnelly was normally a fairly G-rated kinda girl, having been raised on a wholesome diet of educational television shows and organic fruit snacks, but she let loose with the absolute worst members of her voluminous vocabulary upon the entrance of two squabbling individuals toting badges.

Her brief excursion into the explicit realms of her vocabulary earned her a pointed grunt of protest from a disgruntled-looking mother standing just behind the turnstile, who was _totally _working the raccoon-reminiscent tan lines on her face, which suggested someone had fallen asleep in the sun for a long period of time while wearing bulky sunglasses.

Patricia winced, offered a hasty apology, and quickly ushered the woman and her two outrageously enthused little boys through the turnstile and onto the awaiting boat before shooting a desperate SOS to the nearest attendant, who was waving half-heartedly to the passengers as they slowly floated into the happy, sparkly world of irritating music and eerie dancing dolls.

"Jas!" she hissed, waving her arms wildly at her red-haired, gum-chewing co-worker. "Jasmine!"

A wide-eyed, round-bellied girl in a sparkly blue top gasped, whirling and surveying the crowded area with a delighted grin. "Jasmine! Where?"

Pat winced. "Oh. Um, I think she's in the castle . . . with, y'know, Aladdin and . . . the Sultan. Um. Party of two?" she asked, addressing the smirking father of the girl. Quickly, she ushered them onto the ride, feeling mildly guilty, before turning and clutching the hands of her friend.

"Jas, cover for me for five minutes, please? I will owe you forever, and I promise I'll pay you back the five bucks I owe you _and _I will buy you as many turkey legs as you can eat for dinner if you just cover me for a couple of minutes. It's really important, and-"

Jasmine popped a massive pink bubble dangerously close to Patricia's bangs, and rolled her eyes. "I'm a vegetarian. Don't even talk to me about those massive, disgusting testaments to the carnivorous nature of humankind. But, yeah, go ahead. I'm not doing anything anyway. God, I don't see what having more cast-members working a ride is going to do if there's, like, a murderer person on the loose, seriously. All I'm doing is waving everybody off on their happy little voyages into the creepy recesses of, like, a crack addict's mind, and it's so boring I almost freaking fell _asleep _before and fell into the water and _drowned_, since I can't swim to save my life, and then there'd be _two _bodies to deal with, and . . . Um, okay. Walk away from me while I'm telling you how I almost _died_, that's cool, Pat. _Jerk._"

Patricia had abandoned ship, metaphorically, about halfway through her friend's overly-italicized monologue, and now hurriedly ducked under the turnstile, shouldering her way through a crowd of bored, impatient people who were slick with sweat and sunscreen and . . . ew, was that popsicle sludge?

The man and woman she had spotted earlier from her position down by the docking bay were still standing at the edge of the over-flowing ride, eyeing the late-afternoon congestion with trepidation, bickering all the while.

"How are we supposed to conduct an investigation when we cannot even enter the crime scene?" hissed the pretty, dark-haired woman in irritation. Patricia eyed the woman's olive cargo pants and black top, wondering how on the earth she was not sweating gallons.

"I don't know," returned the man, just as crankily, "but it's not like it's _my _fault, so I'd appreciate it if you'd take the snark down a couple levels, if you don't mind."

"Um," Patricia interrupted the heated argument awkwardly. "Hi. Are you guys those naval cop people?"

The man flashed a badge, tearing his attention away from the dark-haired woman long enough for Pat to notice that he was handsome, if a good twenty years her senior, and wish she was wearing anything but her hopelessly gaudy cast member uniform. "Naval Criminal Investigative Service. I'm Special Agent DiNozzo. You are?"

Pat took the man's offered hand, trying her best not to blush. "I'm Patricia Donnelly. Um, I was wondering if . . . there was somewhere we could talk? I think . . . I think I _might _have seen something, and-"

"Sure," the woman agreed, leading Patricia and Agent DiNozzo across the crowded plaza towards an unoccupied bench that stood in the shadows of the ominously looming Haunted Mansion.

"Looks like rain," remarked Agent DiNozzo idly, eyeing the darkening evening sky.

"You are a genius," snarked the woman, who introduced herself as Agent David. Before Agent DiNozzo could retort, Pat, who was sitting uncomfortably on the edge of the bench and trying not to choke on the tension that hung in the air even more thickly than the humidity, cleared her throat.

"Um. So I was on duty around noon yesterday, and-"

The woman's eyebrows furrowed suspiciously. "We interviewed all the cast-members who were on duty yesterday prior to the discovery of the body," she informed her. "I do not recollect seeing you-"

"Stop interrupting her," Agent DiNozzo cut in irritably, not to mention hypocritically. "You're making her nervous."

"I-" Patricia began, feeling awkward and slightly miffed. She was nineteen, for Pete's sake; though she had a feeling, had Agent David not interrupted, the two would have found something else to bicker about.

"Tony, it is hot, I am tired, and I am _not _in the mood," Agent David snapped, holding up a finger with so much menace that it very well could have been a knife. "Do not rattle the chain."

Upon seeing Pat's confusion, Agent DiNozzo shrugged. "I think she means 'rattle the cage.' It's a . . . thing she does."

She nodded, and waited patiently to see if more spats would arise. However, it seemed that Agent David had decided to studiously ignore her co-worker, so after a moment of terribly awkward silence, she began to explain.

"My friend, Jasmine, has this weird hero-complex thing, and she's taken it upon herself to try and save every stray animal who walks this earth. There was this animal shelter fundraiser lunch yesterday, and so she asked me to cover her shift for her. She probably didn't tell you because we're not technically _supposed _to switch shifts, even though everybody does."

"Do you know the name of the place she was at?" Agent DiNozzo inquired. "So we can check up on it?"

"No, but Jas will. She's down there now, you can ask her," she suggested. "Anyway, I think it was around noon, maybe eleven-thirty, when I was working the turnstile. You know, making sure people didn't fall and die while they're getting into the little boats."

"Eleven-thirty?" Agent David repeated, scribbling something into a little pad that had appeared out of nowhere. Patricia nodded, and the accented woman broke her pact of silence long enough to turn to the other agent and say, "Ducky said the time of death was about eleven-thirty, yes?"

"Yep," he replied, popping his 'p' obnoxiously, making Agent David grimace.

"So this woman came running out of the ride, yelling that her husband was having an allergic reaction, and did anyone have an EpiPen. I think she must've jumped out of the boat or something, because her pants were wet up to her knees."

The two agents exchanged significant looks, like maybe Patricia was saying something helpful and so, encouraged, she continued. "I had one in my bag, because I'm crazy allergic to all these random things like strawberries and avocadoes, so I grabbed it and I tossed it to this girl, Lynda, who was standing at the tunnel entrance, y'know, waving people off."

Agent DiNozzo turned to the dark woman beside him. "The girl who we couldn't reach yesterday when we were interviewing the staff . . . Was that-"

She flipped back a few pages in her little notepad, and nodded. "Lynda Palermo."

The sinking feeling in Patricia's gut only increased. "That's her. You haven't been able to reach her? Is she okay?"

"Our boss was going to her apartment as we speak," answered Agent DiNozzo reassuringly. "Was she at work today?"

Pat shook her head, feeling sick to her stomach. "No. We doubled up cast-members, so that we could keep an eye on everything, and Lynda was supposed to work the turnstiles with me, only she wasn't here."

"Okay. And what happened with the woman and her husband?"

"I don't know. Lynda ran into the ride with the lady, because she'd taken all these first aid classes. She's training to become a nurse; she's only interning here. I think the woman said she and her tour guide had gotten her husband out of the boat, onto the platforms. They weren't on the boat when it came out of the exit tunnel, but I guess I just assumed Lynda had taken them out a back exit . . . "

Agent David flipped a couple of pages and pulled out a small snapshot of a smiling couple. The man was handsome, with laughing eyes and a buzz cut. The woman was pretty, too, with fine features and a short blonde pixy cut.

"That's the woman," she confirmed, feeling more and more sick as the moments went by. "Yeah, that's definitely the lady. Is she- " she swallowed hard "- dead?"

"She is missing. Now, she mentioned a tour guide?"

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Sometimes really wealthy people hire a Disney employee to show them around the park. They get to cut lines and hop from park to park. That might've been what they were talking about," Pat faltered. "I don't really remember seeing anyone, though. The faces tend to blur after hours of making sure people don't do stupid things or fall and die."

"And Lynda? Do you remember seeing her after the whole EpiPen incident?" Agent DiNozzo asked.

She considered. "Shoot. No. And I never got my bag back either . . . I don't think I saw her again for the rest of the shift. Oh my god, do you think-" she stopped abruptly, not even wanting to voice the thought.

Pat didn't know Lynda all that well. She was a couple years older than her, maybe twenty-four, and was only working during the summer to pay for her tuition at a medical school somewhere in Georgia. But, still, the thought of the petite brunette lying facedown in a pool of dark water somewhere made her want to vomit all over Agent DiNozzo's expensive-looking shoes.

"Thank you for your time," said Agent David after a moment of silence during which both agents scribbled furiously in their adorable little notepads just like detectives did in the movies. "If you think of anything else-"

"Call me," finished Agent DiNozzo, holding out a business card with a wink that, while entirely teasing, still made Patricia blush furiously.

…

As the freckle-faced girl made her way back into the ride, looking a bit shell-shocked, Ziva sighed. "Why do I think that we may have another body before this case is over?"

"Because you're just a general pessimist who likes to rain on everybody's parade?" Tony suggested cheerfully, pocketing his notebook and eyeing the looming Haunted Mansion, nodding approvingly as the first roll of thunder struck. "Ooh, ominous."

The rain started just as Tony's phone rang. He turned away from the disgusted expression Ziva was giving him and ducked beneath the overhanging rooftop of one of the little shops lining the street. "H'lo?"

_"DiNozzo." _

"Hey, boss. We haven't actually gotten into the ride yet, believe it or not, but don't get mad, 'cause we talked to this girl who was on duty yesterday around noon, subbing in for someone else, and we think the girl we couldn't contact, Lynda Palermo, might be involved-"

_"DiNozzo." _

"Yeah, boss?"

_"You and David get over to Lynda Palermo's condo, and bring the truck. We've got a crime scene." _

"Is she dead?" he inquired, motioning over Ziva, who was standing in the rain and surveying snowy peaks of Cinderella's castle with something adorably similar to childlike wonder. Of course, the awestruck look left her eyes the moment she met his, but he didn't have much time to mourn their sudden loss of whatever the heck their relationship could be classified as.

_"No, but her boyfriend is, and the place is trashed. Fight went down, and Palermo's missing. Connect the dots." _

Tony started to assure Gibbs that they were on their way, only to be confronted with the dial tone. Typical.

…

Alison was starting to think that her friends wanted her to die a lonely old lady with no life and no one for company except several million cats. Or maybe they were always this bad, and she had simply grown accustomed to it . . . Like Stockholm's Syndrome.

Either way, she had never realized how psychotic they were until now, sitting on the rail of a lacy, wrought-iron fence as they waited for the fireworks to begin, watching Jenna and Cara sway back and forth in time to the music.

Jenna still had her stupid headband on, but thankfully its batteries had worn down sometime during the evening, until that horrible, tinny music had finally wavered and died away into blessed, blessed silence.

Cara's long, blonde hair was teased up into a ballerina bun on the very top of her head, topped with a massive, polka-dot bow. She had bought these absurd knee socks which were emblazoned with Goofy's lovely mug, and was wearing them beneath her hot pink sandals, hiked up to her knees.

And to top it all off, Jenna's ice cream mustache had inspired the two psychopathic girls to smear chocolate ice cream across their cheekbones like war paint. They sat Indian-style on the side of the cobblestone walkway, arms around each other's shoulders, swaying and singing loudly along to the music and looking generally absurd.

Ali didn't think she'd ever been so embarrassed in her life.

Craig, to his credit, was pretty thick-skinned. He'd put up with Cara's blatantly obvious flirting, which involved some of the worst pick-up lines Ali had ever heard, as well as Jenna's stone-cold silent treatment which, apparently, was a punishment inflicted on all the 'non-believers.'

Even now, he was talking cheerfully about this time he'd gotten lost in Magic Kingdom for an entire day as a child, very politely ignoring the antics of the other two girls. Ali, however, was finding it hard even to follow Craig's story, she was so pissed.

The last straw was when the song reached its climax, and Jenna jumped to her feet and struck a dramatic pose, booming, "NO MATTER _HOW _YOUR HEART IS _GRIEVING _IF YOU KEEP ON _BELIEVING_, THE DREAM THAT YOU WISH . . . WILL . . . COME . . . _TRUUUUUUUEEEE!" _

"Excuse me," said Ali tautly, sliding down from her perch on the rail and attempting to smile at Craig. "I'm going to go buy a bottle of water. Be right back."

Craig smiled his adorable smile, dimples and all. "I'll be right here."

"Well look who's finally deigned to join our company," drawled Cara, leaning back on her elbows and lazily eyeing Alison as she approached. "We're not worthy, and all that crap."

Jenna looked impressed as she flopped back down on the cobblestone, grinning in satisfaction at her performance and waving cheekily to a small girl who was gaping at her, caught between wonder and fear. "Ooh, good word. 'Deign.' Oh, hi, Ali. How's your love life coming along?"

Ali tried to control herself. These were her best friends. So they'd eaten too many ice cream cones and gone totally crazy. That didn't mean she could strangle them.

"Seriously, guys," she said finally through gritted teeth. "Seriously. If you didn't want me to invite Craig to sit with us, you should've told me. I wouldn't have offered."

Cara looked surprised. "We don't care that you invited him," she answered, eyebrows quirked quizzically. "He's cute. And he doesn't care when I use lewd pick-up lines on him."

Ali gaped. "You were using the bad ones _on purpose_?"

"Um. Honey, I _have _had boyfriends before. I'm not socially _retarded_, nor am I a freaky pervert. Of _course _I was just teasing him . . . " She paused, looking thoughtful. "Though, now that you mention it, I'm not sure that _he _knew I was kidding. He's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, even if he is cute."

"He has nice dimples for a Marlins fan," allowed Jenna begrudgingly.

Alison tried not to shriek in frustration. "If you don't hate him, then _why _are you acting like freaking Oompa-Loompas?"

Jenna snickered and opened her mouth, no doubt to start in on an ear-splitting rendition of the Oompa-Loompa song, but Cara cut her off.

"We're just fooling around, Ali," she said, looking puzzled.

"You're _embarrassing me_," Alison hissed through gritted teeth. "Please, _please _just act like normal people, at least until we get back to the hotel?"

Cara blinked and bit her lip, hard. Jenna opened her mouth to speak, looking caught somewhere between irritation and outright disgust, but whatever she had been about to say was lost in the first booming of fireworks.

The parade had been cancelled, due to the evening thunderstorms, but now, at almost nine at night, the sky was clear and the first shower of sparks lit up the ethereal white of Cinderella's caste spectacularly.

Ali retreated to her seat beside Craig, and tried to focus on the fireworks, gritting her teeth so violently that her jaw ached as Jenna began to sing along with the music once more, in a move that could only have been deliberate.

As the beautiful display wound down, the blonde approached her two friends once more, still unsure whether she was planning on apologizing or berating them further. "Guys-" she began.

"Oh my god!" shrieked Cara, pointing an urgent finger. "It's Tinker Bell!"

Alison turned and watched as the slim figure in green began its smooth flight across the darkened canvass of the smoky sky, knotting her fingers together to prevent herself from doing anything violent.

Suddenly Jenna let loose with a string of vile expletives, making a few nearby heads turn reprimandingly. "Holy-"

"_Jenna_!" Ali admonished, humiliated and angered. "What the hell is your-"

The brunette got to her feet, eyes fixed on the fairy floating down the nearly-invisible zip wire that linked Cinderella's castle to the building where she had appeared from. "Ali, shut up. Is Tinker Bell normally that bulky?"

And then someone at the front of the crowd started screaming.

**Dun-dun-dun! So, we've got various feuds brewing in the midst of our story. Tony and Ziva, which hopefully I will delve a bit further into next chapter. And now there's some trouble brewing in our teenage paradise. Question - too much teenager? If you'd rather I ditched the subplot and just focused on the team, I can. But I've got an idea on how to keep Jenna, Ali, and Cara in the story, without overshadowing the team of course, that will sorta pertain to the plotline. Yes? No? **

**So please, please review and let me know. You guys have already been far too generous with your feedback, and I honestly probably don't deserve it, but I never know with this story. I've been writing and rewriting this chapter for forever, and I'm still not sure about it. What do you guys think? Favorite lines, favorite OCs, favorite parts? Suggestions? Things you don't like? Tips on hair care? Good recipes? I'm open to it all. **

**Love and hugs and really bad eggs (name that movieeee - GO!) ~ Styx ****:-)**


	7. The Mouse From Hell

**Look! I wrote another chapter! And it's long-ish! And I've got another chapter of Highschool Hazards in the makings, so hopefully I'll be able to update all of my stories in the coming week or so, because after all the support I've gotten via review and PM about my writing, you guys deserve it. This is for all of you, but primarily for starryjules, who has been very persistent and not-so-subtle in requesting that I update this story. Thanks, you guys! :)  
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**So here you go, everyone, hope you enjoy. Sorry for the long wait - plots aren't my strong-point, so I'm taking my time and trying to avoid any gaping holes with this baby. Not really any Tiva here, sorry, I'm trying to establish more about the case and the general plot of this story. Hope you enjoy anyway! Leave me a review and encourage me to update again before like half a year's gone by! :)**

**Disclaimer: RED VINES!  
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* * *

><p>"This," said Tony stonily, leaning over to snap another picture of the newest addition to their body count, "is a travesty."<p>

McGee very studiously did NOT look down, instead taking deliberate strides across the room and shifting his weight evenly. He'd always had this subconscious fear that too much weight on one side of a lofty building would send it crashing to the ground far below like a tower of blocks. And now, at the precipice of Cinderella's castle, his childhood phobia was rapidly overtaking all of his common sense.

"I mean," continued Tony in disgust, "this is screwing over so many kids for life. How are they going to watch a Disney movie now without flinching when Tinker Bell flies across the screen at the beginning? How are they gonna believe in, like, the magic or whatever of this place when there's a psycho going around on a killing streak?"

McGee didn't know where to focus his eyes. Outside was the staggering drop to the pavement below, oddly emptied of onlookers, and inside was this- this . . .

"Prints match with the ones Abby pulled from the hotel room," he confirmed, pulling back from the body. "It's Sasha Mendel."

"Damn." Tony snapped a last photo and sighed. "Hell of a honeymoon."

Sasha Mendel's eyes gaped vacantly back, long since dulled by the neat, practiced incision that stretched across the hollow of her throat. The blood itself had been cleaned, and the fatal wound was patched over with a neat row of navy blue band aids, each emblazoned with a smiling Mickey Mouse icon.

"Signs of a struggle," Tim said dully, lifting a waxy hand and allowing Tony to photograph the cracked fingernails that had once been polished in a neat, if fairly cheap French manicure.

"He cleaned her up, probably after the kill," Tony added, eyeing the neat halo of blonde hair, the useless string of bandages, the shimmery green dress that the body was so iconically arrayed in.

Footsteps alerted them to a new arrival. Gibbs strode into the room with a purposeful step and fierce eyes, like he'd already accepted that it was going to be one of _those_ cases and was now demanding progress.

"Pack it up. Local LEO's got a van down below. They'll take the body back to theirs. Duck's on the next flight back down."

Silently, Tony and Tim moved to encase Sasha Mendel in the body bag.

And that was when something silvery fell from beneath the folds of the mock-Tinker Bell gown - a DVD.

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><p>Cara was hyperventilating, choking over her own breath and tugging frantically at a chunk of blonde hair that had escaped her lopsided, ribbon-adorned ballerina bun, to the point where Alison had temporarily put aside her enflamed pride and allowed her naturally compassionate nature to emerge.<p>

"Breathe. It's okay. You're okay. Just breathe."

"We're freaking _cursed_," lamented Jenna dramatically, dropping her head back against the bus window with an audible THUNK.

Perhaps the only upside to Cara's tendency toward hysterics - everybody on the cramped bus was more than willing to give up their seat for the crying teenaged girl and her three sympathetic attendants.

"We're being followed by the bodies," Jenna continued, with a bit of a hysterical edge sharpening her voice. "Literally. First my mom hits a freaky, retarded possum while she's driving me to the airport, then It's a Small World, now _this_!"

"Jenna," said Ali soothingly, fluttering her fingertips against her cheek anxiously and trying to remain calm. Craig was right there, after all, and she could _not_ pull off the whole I'm-crying-but-I'm-still-pretty gig. Her nose just refused to stop running once the tears started flowing, and then-

Okay. She needed to forget about Craig right now. Cara was practically gagging on oxygen and Jenna was wondering aloud about karma and dead possums, and this was not okay.

"Do you think they'll close the park?" Cara wondered, hiccoughing quietly and removing her face from her palms, which were now stained with a considerable amount of watered-down mascara. She looked a bit calmer now, if a total wreck.

"I doubt it," said Craig knowledgeably. "This is the height of the tourist season, and with the new section of Magic Kingdom set to open next month, I don't think they can afford to lose business."

"They'll probably try to hush it up," agreed Jenna. She was gnawing viciously at her thumb nail, a nervous tick that the brunette had never quite vanquished, but otherwise she, too, seemed a bit calmer now. "I mean, they had Small World open the day after, right?"

"The day after what?" inquired Craig, looking a bit more baffled than usual, which Ali found disconcertingly endearing.

Jenna face-palmed. "My point exactly."

As Ali quickly explained the basics of the previous day's traumatic events, Craig's eyes widened to the point where he had begun to resemble Jenna's late rabid possum.

"Are you serious?"

"Dead serious," returned Jenna smugly, and then winced. "Sorry. I know - too soon, Jenna, you insensitive twit, too soon. It was an unintentional pun, I swear. "

"Stop talking," said Cara kindly, patting Jenna's curly head. "Do us all a favor."

"I can't believe they'd just let people back into the ride, right after-" Craig looked astounded. "Ew. I totally went on that ride yesterday. _Ew_."

Jenna shrugged. "That's business, baby. I bet you they'll have Magic Kingdom open again by tomorrow morning."

* * *

><p>"They are <em>what<em>?"

"Reopening the park today," Gibbs repeated, looking quietly furious. He replaced the phone in its cradle with almost ominous gentleness and crossed his arms.

It was a little after five in the morning, and everyone's eyes were weighed down heavily with lines of bruised purple from lack of sleep. Tempers were on edge, to say the least.

"But, Gibbs!" Ziva exploded. "Any remaining evidence will be entirely destroyed! What-"

"I didn't say I was happy about it, David," Gibbs snapped, "but I don't have any control over it. Now unless you have anything to add that I DON'T already know, I'd suggest-"

"Boss!"

McGee burst out of the bedroom, open laptop in hand, looking vaguely frightened and completely absurd in his over-sized sweatpants and tousled hair. He seemed to have developed some sort of coffee mustache. "You gotta see this."

The team assembled quietly, apprehensively, around the laptop. "The DVD on Sasha Mendel's body was clear of fingerprints," announced McGee in preamble. "We'll send it on to Abby just to make sure. But you should see what- what was-"

"Just hit play, McGee," said Gibbs in exasperation. McGee silently did as he was told, and onscreen a familiar black-and-white cartoon of the original Mickey Mouse, whistling and whirling away at the steering wheel of his boat, began to play silently.

And then suddenly the cartoon mouse's face turned and looked directly at the screen with something almost sinister in his normally good-natured grin. Tony, who was mid-yawn, emitted a garbled yelp of surprise.

"Someone edited the video," McGee explained tersely, then fell silent as Mickey's mouth opened and closed clumsily in time with words that were not his, even if they were spoken in Mickey's iconic, high-pitched voice.

"Hey there, Agent Gibbs! Heh-heh! Welcome to Disney World, a place where _dreams_ come _true_! I guarantee you'll have a rootin' tootin' time, so long as you stay out of my way.

"This has nothing to do with your OR your little naval officer, but everybody knows that when you stick your nose where you're not supposed to, bad things sometimes happen! In fact, this reminds me of an experience I had back in my apprentice days, which ended pretty badly because I didn't heed my master's warning...

"Well, Agent Gibbs, here's a bit of friendly advice - heed my warning. Stay out of the way or things will come to just as bad an end. And have a MAGICAL stay in the land where dreams come true! Mickey Mouse, signing out! Heh-heh!"

The tape ended abruptly, and there was a long silence. "That," Tony said finally, "was scary as hell."

"Can we get anything off it?" Gibbs asked in a business-like fashion that suggested he was as completely immune to creepy Mickey Mouse cartoon blackmail as he was to singing automatons with decidedly malignant intent.

McGee shook his head. "This is a popular Disney cartoon. Easy to get access to. Any of a number of well-known, free video editing programs could have been used to freeze and distort the image. The voice-over's a bit more difficult, but anyone who knew what they were doing could tweak the pitch and imitate Mickey's speaking mannerisms... "

"So, basically, no?" Tony interpreted. McGee nodded.

"Unless Abby has something up her sleeve, all we're getting from this is a warning," he concluded.

"I assume we are not heeding this warning?" Ziva looked to Gibbs, who shrugged and got to his feet.

"Never cared much for Mickey Mouse anyway. Now what do we got?"

"Three bodies," she stated, ticking them off on her fingers. "Jared Mendel was drowned. Sasha Mendel was stabbed. And Lynda Palermo's boyfriend, Ben Ferris, was bludgeoned to death with some element of the debris littering her apartment."

"His body wasn't prominently displayed, though," Tony put in seriously, "and he wasn't killed in the park. Suggesting he was just a casualty.

"And if we believe demonic Mickey," he continued, "Mendel wasn't targeted specifically because of his naval connections either. I'm thinking-"

"Serial killer," McGee finished grimly, ignoring Tony's glare.

"Way to steal my thunder, McPercy Jackson."

"He was the _lightning thief_, Tony, and he wasn't even the real culprit-"

"Of course you'd know that," he scoffed.

"_And_," interjected Ziva pointedly, "Lynda Palermo is missing, as well as the Mendel's unofficial tour-guide."

"Five bucks he's the killer," Tony offered, and was promptly head-slapped.

"No taking bets on criminals," Gibbs admonished sternly. Tony obediently nodded and grinned, abashed.

"Yes, boss. Sorry, boss."

"We're waiting on Ducky to confirm cause of death," McGee said, shooting Tony a furtive smirk before returning to business. "And on Abby with the contents of the Mendel's personal belongings, including Sasha Mendel's original clothing and very stylish fanny-pack-"

"Which I found," Ziva cut in, "in the launch room, along with the real Tinker Bell doll and two unconscious staff members who were attacked from behind."

"He didn't kill them," Gibbs noted thoughtfully, "so he's got a plan. He knows who he's targeting. Ferris was a big guy, and probably wasn't expected, so he was forced to dispose of him."

"So I'm thinking that you seem to be thinking what I'm thinking, boss," said Tony, raising a hand as if to high-five their blue-eyed team leader.

Gibbs raised an eyebrow. "I wasn't aware you thought at all, DiNozzo."

Tony's grin was not lessened by insult. "Serial killer?"

Gibbs smacked the ring of keys into the Senior Field Agent's open palm. "Go pick up Ducky from the airport. Then we'll see."

* * *

><p>Abby was feeling really, really, really left out as she waved at McGee through her webcam later that morning, and she was more than vocal about her complaints. "I still can't believe you guys are in Disney world without me - gallivanting about, solving crime without me. Totally unfair. How's Mickey?"<p>

McGee shuddered. "Creepy."

She frowned. "How could you say that? He's the face of a magical legacy! McGee!"

"I'm... assuming you didn't watch the DVD yet," he guessed. Abby frowned slightly and nodded.

"But don't you dare give me slack about it," she quickly continued. "I have been working my _butt_ off here at home without ANY Mickey Mouse-shaped delicacies to brighten my day, and-"

"And you found _what_, exactly?" Gibbs interjected neatly, appearing out of nowhere in typical Gibbs fashion.

Abby pulled a face, but dutifully got down to business without any further complaint.

"Well. I went through the Mendel's dinosaur of a computer, and I found the website they visited to book their schmancy 'unofficial tour guide.' It has since been deleted, but it was super easy to track down the website creator, considering he made NO effort to cover his tracks-"

"And that person _was_?" Gibbs prompted.

"A Daniel Underhill," Abby reported, eyes sparkling proudly in a way that made McGee miss her hourly hugs, "whose fingerprints I also found on the bottle of peanut oil-laced sunscreen in Sasha Mendel's fashionable fanny pack."

"Sounds like a contender," McGee commented, fingers already flying over the keys as he pulled up anything and everything on one Daniel Underhill.

"Oh, McGee, you have no idea," returned Abby smugly. "He lives nearby, started working in the park at age seventeen as some sort of intern, and worked his way up to Imagineer standings-"

"Imagineers are like the master-minds behind the park, boss," McGee hastily explained. "They design the rides and the shows and-"

"And the huge new addition in the Magic Kingdom that they're currently building," Abby finished, "with a whole other castle and new rides and everything! It's opening really soon, I think."

"So how come Underhill's not busy building castles still?" Gibbs inquired.

"He was fired seven months ago. I don't know why; there must have been a tiff or whatever, but he's been officially unemployed ever since, though his bank records show he received a couple pretty substantial payments recently, which match with the money withdrawn by the Mendels."

"Good work, Abs," said Gibbs approvingly, terminating the link after smiling briefly at the Goth. She blew him a red-lipsticked kiss.

"Say hi to Mickey for me!"

"Yeah, not gonna happen... " the agent murmured, once the screen had gone blank. He then turned to McGee. "Everything on Underhill. Now."

"Uh... Daniel Underhill, aged 46. Only child, one living parent, no other immediate relations. Currently unemployed... "

"Something I can WORK with, McGee. We've got a girl to rescue!"

"Right. He lives right here in Orlando... and it says here that approximately seven months ago Underhill was arrested for vandalizing somebody's car," McGee reported tersely, scanning the police report onscreen. "Charges were dropped, but that's why his prints were in the system."

"Whose car?"

"A Gordon Bingley's." McGee abruptly looked up from the screen to give Gibbs a significant look. "Head Imagineer of the Disney industries."

"Go," the older agent directed, already dialing his ancient excuse for a cell phone. "Ziver? You and DiNozzo meet me at this address - we've got a possible suspect."

* * *

><p>With a substantial amount of mouse-shaped breakfast food in her system, Cara Jennings was feeling a bit more rational and looking a bit less of a disaster.<p>

She had even recovered sufficiently to be irritatingly nosy, leaning over Ali's shoulder and making blatant attempts at reading her text messages as they sat quietly on the crowded shuttle bus.

Jenna was not quite as actively curious, though every bit as unsubtle. "Who ya textin' there, skippy?" she sing-songed inquiringly, propping her chin in her hands and batting her eyelashes to the extent that she looked quite drunk.

"Craig," Cara reported, craning her neck as Ali shifted away, "with a little less-than-three heart after his name."

The two grinned in unison. "Oooooh!"

"HE put that, not me!" Ali was quick to protest, blushing as fuscia as her tank top. "And I didn't ASK for his number! He OFFERED!"

"That's so CAH-YUTE!" Cara declared in a high-pitched, exaggerated Jersey accent. She clasped her hands together in blissful rapture.

"If a little sketchy," added Jenna, crinkling her freckled nose. "Seriously, do you even know his last name?"

"I- No," Ali admitted.

"Why don't you ask him?" Cara suggested brightly, getting to her feet and waving wildly to a certain good-looking boy with a Justin Bieber-haircut and a Marlins cap as he boarded the shuttle bus. "Hey! Craig!"

Ali blushed again when he grinned, almost entirely at her, and took a seat opposite them. "Hey, Ali... Cara, Jenna."

"Hey!"

"S'up."

"You're still wearing that hat?"

Craig touched its brim self-consciously and grinned. "Yeah, I gotta support my team!"

They dissolved into small talk for a moment or two before Jenna pronounced abruptly, "We'd make a kick-butt detective agency."

The three other teens - who had been idly discussing baseball teams and the girls' total lack of knowledge or, frankly, interest - turned in simultaneous confusion.

"What?"

"You know. Like the Boxcar children! Ooh, or the Bobwhites!"

Blank stares.

Jenna pressed on bravely. "Oh, come on! No one? From those old Trixie Belden mysteries?... No one?"

"I... I thought we were talking about baseball," said Craig slowly, looking utterly perplexed by the brunette's obscure literary ramblings.

Jenna sighed. "Fine. Like- like the Hardy boys. Or Nancy Drew-"

"Ooh! I get to be Emma Roberts!" Cara piped in, eyes sparking in recognition at last.

"You want to be detectives," Ali reiterated slowly, "and track down a murderer who's so far evaded a whole team of scary-looking, very attractive naval cop people?"

"YES! 'Cause Captain Marlin the Bieber is like a VIP, so we can explore backstage and then gather information so that we can report it to the super hot special agent! GUYS! THIS IS LIKE FATE!"

"I KNEW you were getting high off the maple syrup at breakfast," Ali muttered, putting her head in her hands.

"I'm in," said, of all people, Craig. "So long as I get a cool code-name."

"What, Captain Marlin the Bieber isn't good enough for you now?"

"Justin cut his hair," Cara put in mournfully.

"You guys are serious," Ali stated, getting that sinking feeling in her gut that she always got when she knew she was going to be out-voted and forced into doing something completely insane.

"Dead serious. Ooh." Jenna winced. "Same bad pun again, sorry. But, yeah! I'll be Agent Gallagher, and Cara'll be Agent Jennings and you're Agent Kinney, and... Craig, are you sure your last name isn't Bieber?"

Craig grinned and adjusted his hat self-consciously again. "Nah, it's Bingley."

"Bingley? Like from Pride and Prejudice?" Jenna looked excited all over again.

"Um. I don't know?" answered Craig uncertainly, but Jenna was already on a roll.

"-and Ali, you're totally Jane. Cara, you're Lydia because you're obviously a total ditz, and I'll be Elizabeth... Craig, if you've got a tall, dark, and handsome friend with a bad attitude hanging around, now would be the time to introduce him... preferably the Colin Firth version-"

Ali put her head in her hands to hide the smile that persisted in cropping up, no matter how exasperated she was.

* * *

><p><strong>So, yeah. Hope you enjoyed, despite the lack of Tiva. Please leave me a review - it's okay if you want to yell at me for updating lol, I sort of deserve it. But I DO have more of an idea of where I'm taking this now, so hopefully that'll spur me on. My muses and brain seem to have taken a long vacation, but I'm trying to work my way through it. <strong>

**Seriously, thank you to everyone who was so encouraging and reassuring in their reviews to Life, in Shades of Purple. I'm feeling much better about my writing now, and hopefully you'll like this chapter as much as I do! Please let me know whether or not you did, as well as what your favorite lines and characters are and what your speculations are for the plot.  
><strong>

**Much Love ~ Styx  
><strong>


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